What is depression?

We all know what it’s like to be depressed.

A feeling of sadness, hopelessness, loneliness, a sense of futility in life and inability to think clearly or take any action, says Dr Suresh Venkita, a medical doctor with the Pacific International Hospital.

World Health Day for 2017 passed by on April 7 with the focus on ‘depression’.

Here, Dr Venkita, also the Chief Physician at PIH, discusses depression.

He says, even getting out of bed becomes an impossible task and there is no will to face the day.

Nothing is interesting anymore, neither food nor clothes are attractive anymore. Managing husband, wife, children or family seems an insurmountable challenge and a burden. Life does not seem worth living. You are lost in a dark, cold and deep tunnel at the end of which there is no light.

“Fortunately, most depression is ‘reactive’, a response to seemingly adverse situations, and therefore with a possibility of correction,” says Venkita.

But, he adds, that true depression, also called endogenous, needs very thorough psychiatric evaluation and monitored treatment.

“The neuro-chemicals in the brain are likely to have an imbalance. The biggest risk with depression is suicidal thought which needs urgent psychiatric attention.

“An enigma in this area of abnormal mental health is Manic Depressive Psychosis, also called MDP or just ‘bipolar’.”

Venika says bipolar is best described in the words of a doctor who suffered from it who wrote in his biography; all my life has been on a roller-coaster ride-up, high and dizzying one moment, then steep, down and bottomless next. I own the world when I am at the top, all is lost when I am at the bottom.

“WHO has accurately and thoughtfully defined Health as ‘Complete physical and mental wellbeing and NOT merely absence of disease’,” he said.

Author: 
Gloria Bauai